Although to think of it, if she’s the teacher… hmmmm…

Lol!

I should have my Speech-Language Pathologist Wife read this, she’d love this discourse on language.

In French we put the adjectives after the name its referring to, while in English its before the name. This is, I think, the most common mistake when a Native French speaker writes in English. For the English speaker though their is the added difficulty of gender which make no sense even to us.

I’ve had a few Germain course and this is even harder since the verb is usually at the end of their sentences. I just can wrap my brain to say it in the proper order. (Also the lack of vocabulary is a major handicap in this case

Each language has its own words and sounds. But i think the hardest to learn is the structure of a foreign language because its closely related to the way you think. This, I think, is probably the reason that the earlier you learn other language the easier it is.

Same here.

Me - Civil Engineering student

and to use your names for them:

“Jake” - Computer Engineer, and Master’s Student in the same
“Jill” - Mechanical Engineer
“Will” - Electrical Eng. Tech. student

though we then have:

“Gwen” - works in a bank, trained as a travel agent, but has lived among engineers for years

and “Stan” - Plumber

As for your 1st question, Quebec is 85%+ French. It’s quite normal for an average Quebecer to go about his/her whole life without learning English.

Stef and Franky are pretty good, they just don’t have as many occasions to practice.

It can be a bit difficult to get around in Quebec for us anglophones, sometimes. Luckily, the majority of Quebeccers (or the majority that we deal with) are at least decently bilingual.

I originally asked because I noticed some parts of Stef’s writing that made it clear that english wasn’t his first language. The post was perfectly clear, but there are certain quirks of grammar that come from having a different first language.

The cool part is that those grammatical quirks are different depending on what your first language is. And they’re often very similar among people with the same first language. So native french speakers will tend towards certain grammatical forms, while spanish speakers will tend towards others, etc.

It’s sometimes fun to see if I can pinpoint the person’s first language from their typing.

…but I’m kinda weird like that.

It so happens that Yan, Eric (Crueger), Math and I are bilingual because we’ve had deal with English clients (and/or went to an English University).

Stef and Franky are pretty good, they just don’t have as many occasions to practice.

Actually our group is pretty techie:

Me: Quality Management/Microbiologist
Franky: Environmental Technician
Stef: IT Manager(ex: Analytical Lab tech)
Math: Biochemistry PhD and works for a Scientific IP office

The debates could get quite detail oriented…

And yes, GNCTR is a university competition. At the Unoversity of Manitoba we’ve competed for years, and ETS has had a great team in the event every year we go.

E-T,
E-T-S,
E-T-S Go, Let’s Go!

(…if I remember their english chant correctly.)

Really fun group to party with. Hopefully they’ll be there this year, too.

As for Montréal and it suburbs, well it as its issue like every other city, but I like its multicultural aspect.

The concrete toboggan race!? Isn’t this a university competition? If I remember correctly the university I graduated from was participating in this. (ETS)

It differs depending on who you talk to in your area, so I figured I’d ask.

I’ve been to Montreal a couple times, by the way. Great city you have there.

And Laval has the ZeStuff Offline Store, so I’m jealous.

Oh well. I’ll be over in Sherbrooke this year. For the Great Northern Concrete Toboggan Race. Fun times.